


a little kindness and something sweet

by itsmylifekay



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Gen, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, POV Nile Freeman, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:55:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26213743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmylifekay/pseuds/itsmylifekay
Summary: It’s a hot day in the middle of August. Cicadas are screaming, sweat is dripping, and Nile is looking forward to being back in the AC, hopefully sprawled out on the wooden floor with a fan aimed directly at her face.(Unfortunately her plans are foiled and there's some light angst to deal with before things can end in sweetness. Featuring Nicky and Joe being in love, Andy being secretly fond, and Nile being the best, as usual.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 14
Kudos: 368





	a little kindness and something sweet

**Author's Note:**

> the child abuse is very vague, but i put the tag just to be sure

It’s a hot day in the middle of August. Cicadas are screaming, sweat is dripping, and Nile is looking forward to being back in the AC, hopefully sprawled out on the wooden floor with a fan aimed directly at her face.

They’re in southern Japan, surrounded by mountains, and Nile wants to call foul on this borderline satanic weather.

The shops had been nice, at least, not too crowded, a cool breeze coming from the refrigerated section if she lingered for long enough. There’s food in her backpack to last a couple of days and bags in each hand full of snacks, pain meds, toiletries and _ice cream_. She’s produced more sweat on the walk back than she has in the last week in an attempt to avoid meltage, has some complementary ice at the bottom of that bag and can feel the condensation already dripping against her leg.

It’s cool and perfect and she’s counting down each second between now and the sweet, blessed moment of dumping everything else on the floor and tearing into the one thing that matters.

So she’s a little distracted when she walks up to their house, blows right past the car parked out front before suddenly pausing and craning her neck back to check that yes, that is Joe sitting in the front seat in this blistering heat, and no, he doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.

She frowns, takes an extra moment to ascertain that he seems fine, if not a little irate at whatever’s going on with his phone, and ducks inside before the ice cream can take too much damage.

The house is silent as she kicks off her shoes and leaves them in the entrance. Her footsteps seem almost loud and she wonders if Andy and Nicky have stepped out when she turns the corner and finds both of them in the kitchen, Andy leaned against the counter and Nicky sat at the table.

Andy looks up at her when she comes in.

“Nice walk?”

She eyes them for a moment then drops most of her bags to the ground, “Yeah, nice and sweaty.”

She opens the freezer and puts the ice cream in to save for later. Seems like she won’t be eating it now. “What happened?”

At first, there’s no answer. She starts digging through her backpack and lining things up on the counter to put away, watching from the corner of her eye as Andy looks at Nicky and Nicky looks at the table, or at least the air above it.

“Nothing happened,” Andy finally says.

Nile puts the milk in the fridge—three different kinds because they’ve all got _opinions._ Then she gives Andy a look, one that she hopes conveys just how much she is not buying that answer, especially not after hiking through an outdoor sauna and having her plans of ice cream and floor-based AC thwarted.

And it’s not like she doesn’t already have some idea.

She was _there_ , last night, when things had gone south and what should have been a fairly simple in and out had become a small disaster. Joe had nearly lost a finger. Andy was going to be adding a few new scars to her collection— small, manageable, but there nonetheless.

Nile had almost died. Twice.

But Nicky was the one in the wrong place at the wrong time, unable to get away when part of the catwalk broke in the explosion, a metal cable snapping across his back. The force had been enough to knock him to the ground, the sound enough to travel through the room.

But it hadn’t been enough to kill him.

A nasty wound across his back, bloody and painful but quickly healed like everything else. She hadn’t realized the weight of what happened until they were back at their safe house on the outskirts of the city, Nicky even quieter than usual as Joe hovered at his side.

Then came the nightmares.

Nile had woken in the middle of the night to choked sounds from across the room, peering into the darkness to see Nicky shaking in Joe’s arms, muttering in Italian that Nile could barely grasp, words caught in his throat between muffled sobs.

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Father, forgive me._

Nile had a feeling he didn’t mean the man upstairs.

It made something in her stomach turn, connecting dots and coming up with conclusions, images, that she didn’t ever want in her head.

Joe hushed him and held him closer, wiping away tears. Andy sat in silent vigil beside them.

She met Nile’s gaze in the dark.

“Some memories never leave you,” she said.

Nile had crawled over to them wordlessly, sat next to Andy with her arms around her legs to offer whatever support she could. Joe smiled at her weakly.

Nicky hadn’t reacted at all, sobs dying into whimpers muffled in Joe’s shirt, hands clenched in the fabric tight enough his knuckles were white. Joe reached down to rub at them gently, letting out a broken sound of his own when Nicky flinched at the touch.

It had been a long night.

So she stares at Andy, and she waits. Because she’s a part of this family and she’s got ice cream in the fridge for fragile hearts and a bath bomb in her duffle for shaking hands. She can help _._ Or, she could at least _try_.

Andy gives her a tired smile. “It’s the truth, kid. Nothing happened.”

“Then why is Joe outside trying to strangle his phone while you two sit in here like someone shot your dog?” Nile asks, a little hot and cranky but trying not to get frustrated.

Andy gives Nicky another look and Nile waits for whatever silent conversation they’re about to have, puts some soup cans into a cupboard and closes the door.

Nicky puts his head in his hands and sighs.

“If it’s personal, I get it,” she says. They may be a family, but everyone has things that cut a little too close to home. There are other ways she can help. “I’ll just go take Joe some water before he melts into the seats.”

She puts a few more groceries away in silence, opening and closing the fridge and idly wondering if Joe would want his ice cream now, or if he’d just end up making the car sticky and undrivable for anyone else.

“There was a football game on last night,” Andy says from behind her.

Nile turns, box of pasta in hand and halfway to another cupboard.

“Joe likes the team. When he can’t watch the games, he watches parts of them on his phone,” Andy shrugs. “They lost.”

Nile blinks, pretty sure that _she’s_ the one who’s lost. Because that still doesn’t really answer any of her questions. “Did he lose a bet then? Is that why he’s in the car?”

Andy glances at Nicky again, shakes her head. “No, he didn’t. He’s just stubborn.” Nicky makes an agreeing sound and Andy flicks him gently on the back of the head. “So are you.”

Now Nile is even more lost, decides this might just be one of those things that come with the immortal-friends-and-warriors territory— weird conversations, weird quirks, and even weirder inside jokes and stories that will take years for her to understand.

She finishes putting the pasta in the cupboard.

A chair scrapes behind her.

“Joe is very…passionate, about football,” Nicky says. His voice is tired, but he’s looking up at Nile instead of the table when she turns around. “He yells like they can hear him through the screen.”

And, _oh._

Pieces click into place in Nile’s mind and she nods, willing to let it go at that but Nicky wipes a hand over his face and gives a rueful twitch of his lips.

“I told him I would go for a walk.”

Andy rolls her eyes. “And he told you he would wait to watch, but you insisted. You’re both impossible.”

Nile laughs softly under her breath and empties the last of her backpack, taking the last few things from the counter and putting them in the fridge.

“So he’s out there yelling at his phone in the hot car so you don’t have to hear it?” she asks. “Now that’s love.”

Nicky’s lips give another twitch.

“Joe speaks very often of my kindness and very little of his own.”

Nile thinks of Joe’s arms around Nicky in the dead of night, the way his eyes crinkle when he laughs, and the wink he’d given her along with her first sketchbook and pencils, declaring them united under the flag of art and good taste.

Joe is open and loud and full of love that manifests in all sorts of ways.

He would carry his friends uphill through the desert—and tease them the entire way. (He is not the martyr in their little group.)

“He brags about you because he knows you won’t do it yourself,” Nile says.

Andy grunts something vaguely agreeing and pushes a hand through Nicky’s hair, making it look like a shove on the surface but Nile doesn’t miss the way her fingers linger, threading through the strands and ruffling them a bit before pulling away.

The front door opens and shuts and Joe appears moments later, hairline dripping and shirt stuck to his back with sweat.

He heads straight for Nicky and presses a kiss to his forehead, murmurs a quiet “ _Sono qui, amore mio”_ and gives him a soft look, settles an even softer hand on his shoulder. Calm, gentle, in every line of his body.

Nicky glances up at him, covers his hand with his own and squeezes.

It feels like the room itself exhales, the floorboards settling back into place.

Nile pops open the door to the freezer.

If there was ever a time for ice cream, it had to be now, two of them hot and disgusting and all of them thoroughly deserving of a break.

She tosses the chocolate coffee papico to Andy, keeps the peach ice-no-mi for herself, and slides the shirokuma and ice cream macaron across the table to Nicky and Joe. Doesn’t wait for them to respond before she tears open her packet and pops the first gelato ball in her mouth.

“I tried to pick things you’d like,” she says.

They look between the ice cream, each other, and her.

Nicky is the first to speak, still looking a little mystified at the sudden change of events. “Thank you, Nile.”

Joe makes a happy noise and presses both packets to his face. “It’s cold, I don’t care what it tastes like.”

He opens the macaron first, eats half in one bite before holding the other out for Nicky. He groans, low and obscene, and at first Nile isn’t sure if it’s because of the ice cream or the way Nicky’s lips have brushed against his fingers.

“Nile,” he says. “You are a gift. A treasure.” He comes around the table to press a kiss to the top of her head. “A genius.”

She laughs around the ice cream in her mouth, offering him one to try that he eagerly accepts, letting out another groan that has Andy punching him in the shoulder.

“We have neighbors,” she says. Then, she looks at Nile, holds up her bottle-shaped ice cream in a mock salute. “Thanks, kid.”

Joe has slipped back to the other side of the table, is leaned over Nicky’s shoulder to open the second ice cream and the plastic spoon that had come in the bag, scooping out the first bite and offering it to Nicky to taste.

Nicky makes a pleased noise and Joe kisses the top of his head, feeds him another bite before stealing one of his own.

“An _angel_ ,” Joe says, looking back at Nile. “A saint.”

Nile laughs, shakes her head and leans against the fridge, pops another gelato ball into her mouth.

Summer may be gross and sticky, entirely too hot and unreasonably humid, but moments like this make it bearable, make it sweet, in ways that she knows will linger in her memories more than any of the sweat or cicadas ever could.

_Just a spoonful of sugar…_

She laughs under her breath.

They look at her, eyebrows raised, Nicky humming curiously around his spoon. He already looks better, looser, Joe an easy presence at his side instead of the tense shadow of the night before. Nile smiles.

“So,” she starts. “Have any of you seen Mary Poppins?”

-

And sometimes that’s truly all it takes, a little kindness, a little sugar, to turn an entire day around.


End file.
